Family Description: Perennial, usually glabrous herbs, with underground rhizomes or tubers. Leaves all basal, usually with distinct petiole, and often with more or less reticulate venation. Flowers small, often unisexual, arranged in a compact spike (spadix), subtended and usually partly enfolded by a large, petaloid or leaf-like bract (spathe), the axis of the spadix often prolonged beyond the flower-bearing zone as a fleshy, usually coloured appendix. In monoecious plants the female flowers are at or near the base of the spadix, the male flowers above them; vestigial, sterile flowers, usually in the form of filiform papillae, may also be present. Perianth of 4-6 free, sepaloid segments, or (more usually) absent. Stamens 1-6, rarely more. Ovary superior or nude, sometimes sunk in the axis of the spadix, 1- to 3-locular; stigma usually sessile or subsessile. Fruit a berry, sometimes rather dry.

Family Description: Shrubs or trees; stem usually unbranched. Leaves large, persistent, petiolate with a conspicuous sheath. Inflorescence a simple or branched spadix, enveloped by 1 or several spathes. Flowers hermaphrodite or unisexual, hypogynous. Perianth usually of 2 whorls of 3. Anthers dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary of 1-3 free or united carpels; ovules 1 in each carpel. Fruit a berry or drupe.